


a universe in chaos

by writing_addict



Series: a whole sky of different stars: fma au collection [1]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Skyward - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Action/Adventure, Aerial Combat, Alternate Universe - Aliens, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Backstory, Caves, Defiant - Freeform, Dystopia, Father-Son Relationship, Fighter Pilots, Gen, Hohenheim isn't an absent father he's a dead one, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, One Shot, Skyward AU, Space Battles, War, cobb i love you you ridiculous parental teacher figure, ed is an angry little dork, i have so many feelings about spin and jorgen and don't even talk to me about cobb, so naturally i wrote an au with ed as spin, that's literally it it's a backstory oneshot based off the skyward prologue, we love a httyd-star wars-based story thank u brandon sanderson, y'all should read skyward it's gr8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-16 04:52:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18087797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writing_addict/pseuds/writing_addict
Summary: "Their heads are heads of rock, their hearts set upon rock.Be different. Set your sights on something higher.Something more grand.Claim the stars."It only takes a day to crush a dream...or start a fire.





	a universe in chaos

**Author's Note:**

> so I read skyward by brandon sanderson and...this happened. The first in a series of one-shots of my FMAB Skyward AU, in which I will be writing key moments from a book that has quite literally CHANGED MY WHOLE LIFE. seriously, read skyward. you won't be disappointed.
> 
> (title from "Born to Fly" by nerdout ft. halocene)

Only fools climbed to the surface. It was stupid to put yourself in danger like that, Ed’s mother had always said. Not only were there near-constant debris showers from the rubble belt, but it was impossible to know when the Homunculi would attack.

Of course, Ed’s father traveled to the surface basically every day—he had to, as a pilot. Ed supposed by his mother’s definition that made him _extra_ foolish, but he always considered him extra _brave._

He was still surprised when one day after years of listening to him beg to see the world they lived on, he finally agreed to take him up with him.

Ed was seven years old, though to his mind he’d been utterly grown up and perfectly capable of the journey—certainly far more capable than his sweet, un-warriorlike little brother, who didn’t seem to care about the sky at _all._ Ed thought that was stupid, really; who _wanted_ to stay in the caverns all the time? Nothing interesting ever happened there. No, the surface was definitely going to be a million-gajillion times better.

(Maybe because there were no other kids up there to make fun of him for looking five, and no way for him to get in trouble for biting them when they were mean.)

He hurried after his father, clutching a lantern to light the rubble-strewn cavern. A lot of the rocks in the tunnel were broken and cracked, mostly likely from Homunculi bombings—things he’d experienced down below as a rattling of dishes or a trembling of light fixtures. He imagined those broken rocks as the broken bodies of his enemies, their bones shattered, their trembling arms reaching upward in a useless gesture of _complete and total defeat_.

Ed was a very odd little boy.

He caught up to his father, who looked back before smiling. Father had the _best_ smile, so confident, like he never worried about what people said about him. Never worried that he was weird or didn’t fit in.

Then again, why _should_ he have worried? _Everyone_ liked his father. Even people who hated ice cream and playing swords—even whiny little Jamie Birde, who was stupidly tall for her age and liked poking him hard with sticks and pretending she hadn’t done anything—liked his father.

Father took him by the arm and pointed upward. “Next part is a little tricky. Let me lift you.”

“I can do it,” Ed protested, and shook off that gentle, guiding hand. He was all grown up, for stars’ sakes. He’d packed his own backpack _and_ left Massacre, his stuffed stardragon, at home. Stuffed stardragons were for babies like Al, even if you happened to fashion your own mock power armor for yours out of string and broken ceramics. Which he'd done, because it looked _totally scudding kickass,_ excuse his language.

Granted, he _had_ put his toy starfighter in his backpack. He wasn’t crazy. What if they ended up caught in a Homunculi attack and they bombed their retreat, so he and his father had to live out the rest of their lives as wasteland survivors, devoid of society or civilization?

A boy needed his toy starfighter, just in case.

Ed handed his backpack to his father and looked up at the crack in the stony ceiling high above. There was… _something_ about that hole up there. An unnatural light seeped through it, wholly unlike the soft glow of their lanterns in their home cavern.

 _The surface…the sky!_ He grinned and started climbing up a steep slope that was part rubble, part rock formation. His hands slipped and he scraped himself on a sharp edge, but he didn’t cry. The sons of pilots did _not_ cry, especially not the eldest son of the best pilot _ever._

The crack in the cavern roof looked a hundred meters away. Ed hated being so small. Any day now, he was going to grow tall like his father. Then for once he wouldn’t be the smallest kid around, tiny enough to look _five_ instead of _seven._ He’d laugh at everyone from up so high, they’d be forced to admit how great he was.

He growled softly as he got to the top of a rock. The next handhold was out of reach. He eyed it. Then he jumped, determined. Like a good Defiant kid, Ed had the heart of a stardragon.

But he also had the body of an extra-tiny seven-year-old. So he missed by a good half meter.

A strong hand seized him before he could fall too far. His father chuckled, holding him by the back of his jumpsuit, which Ed had painted with markers to look like his flight suit. He’d even drawn a pin on the left over his heart, like the one he wore—the pin that had marked him as a pilot. It was in the shape of a starfighter with lines underneath.

Father pulled him back onto the rock beside him, then reached out with his free hand and activated his light-line. The device looked like a metal bracelet, but once he engaged it by tapping two fingers against his palm, the band glowed with a bright, molten light. He touched a stone above, and when he drew his hand back, it left a thick line of light like a shining rope fixed to the rock. He wrapped the other end around Ed so it fit snugly under his arms, then detached it from his bracelet. The glow there faded, but the luminescent rope remained in place, attaching him to the rocks.

Ed had always thought the light-lines should burn to the touch, but it was just warm. Like a hug.

“Okay, Fullmetal,” Father said, using the nickname he’d come up with when he was three and going through a ridiculous robot-knight phase before he’d come to the obvious conclusion that _pilots_ were the very best and bravest thing ever. According to his mother, Ed had wrapped himself in tinfoil and gone around fighting couch cushions with a spoon, and had done so for _days._ It was silly, and dumb, and he scowled for effect but felt secretly pleased. The nickname was special, something his father didn’t give anyone else. Not like that warm lantern-shine smile. Maybe he’d make it his callsign when he became the best pilot _ever—_ after Father, because Father was the capital-B _Best._ “Try it again.”

He plucked at the safety rope sulkily. “I don’t need this.”

“Humor a frightened father.”

“Frightened?” The very word felt blasphemous. _Cowardly._ “You aren’t frightened of anything. You fight _the Homunculi.”_

He laughed. “I’d rather face a thousand Homunculus ships without a weapon of my own than your mother on the day I bring you home with a broken arm, little one.”

“I’m _not_ little! And if I break my arm, you can leave me here until I heal. I’ll fight the beasts of the caverns and become feral and wear their skins and become king of the cavern monsters and—”

“Climb,” he repeated, still grinning. “You can fight and conquer the beasts of the caverns another time, though I think the only ones you’d find have long tails and buckteeth.”

Uck. Cavern rats. Still, even those could be ferocious beasts enough for a good fight, he supposed.

But the sky was more important than battling rats today.

Ed had to admit, the light-line was helpful. He could pull against it to brace himself. They reached the crack, and his father pushed him up first. He grabbed the rim and scrambled out of the caverns, stepping onto the surface for the first time in his life.

It was so _open._

Ed gaped, standing there, looking up at…nothing. Just…just… _upness._ No ceiling. No walls. He’d always imagined the surface as a really, really big cavern, but this… It was so much more, and so much less, all at once.

_Wow._

His father heaved himself up after Ed and dusted the dirt from his flight suit. Ed glanced at him, then back up at the sky, his eyes shining and a wide grin pulling at his face.

“Not frightened?” Father asked.

Ed glared at him.

“Sorry,” he said with a chuckle. “Wrong word. It’s just that a lot of people find the sky intimidating, Ed.”

It _was_ intimidating, but Ed was nothing but Defiant—and it was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen. “It’s beautiful,” he whispered, staring up at that vast nothingness, air that extended up into an infinite grayness, fading to black.

The surface was still brighter than he’d imagined. Their planet, Detritus, was protected by several enormous layers of space debris, junk that was _way_ up high in the air. In _space._ Wrecked space stations, massive metal shields, old chunks of metal as big as mountains—there were dozens, hundreds of layers of it, kind of like broken shells around the planet.

Their people— _humans—_ hadn’t built any of it. They’d crashed on the planet when Ed’s grandmother had been a girl, and this stuff had been ancient even then. Still, some of it worked enough to be of use. For example, the bottom layer—the one closest to the planet—had enormous glowing rectangles in it. Ed had heard of those in lessons. Skylights: enormous, floating lights that gave illumination and warmth to the planet.

There was supposed to be a lot of littler bits of junk up there too, particularly in the lowest layer. Ed squinted, standing on his tiptoes to try and see if he could pick any of it out, but space was too far away. Other than the two nearby skylights—one of which was directly above us—the only things I could see were some vague patterns up there in the grayness. Lighter chunks and darker chunks.

“The Homunculi live up there?” he asked, turning to peer up at his father. “Beyond the debris field?”   

“Yes,” Father said. “They fly down through the gaps in the layers to attack.”

“How do they find us?” He turned in a circle slowly, head tilted back to stare up at the debris fields. “There’s so much _room_ up here.” The world seemed a much larger place than he’d ever imagined in the caverns below.

“They can somehow sense when people gather together.” He could feel those warm, golden eyes on his back and peeked over his shoulder to find him smiling again, though it looked a little sad now. Ed didn’t bother wondering why; his dad did funny things like that all the time. At least it was a smile, right? And it was _all for him._ “Anytime the population of a cavern gets too big, the Homunculi attack and bomb it.”

Decades ago, Ed remembered, their people had been part of a fleet of space vessels. They’d been chased by the Homunculi to this planet and had crashed here, where they’d been forced to split up to survive. Now humankind lived in clans, each of whom could trace their lineage back to the crews on one of those starships.

Gran had told Ed those stories thousands of times, so many times that he could recite the tale from memory. They’d lived for seventy years on Detritus, traveling the caverns in nomadic clans, afraid to congregate. Until ten years ago—when they begun to build starfighters and had made a hidden base on the surface. They were fighting back.

“Where’s Xerxes Base?” he asked, bouncing on his toes. “You said we’d come up near it. Is that it?” He pointed at some particularly suspicious rocks. “It’s right there, isn’t it? I want to go see the starfighters.” Maybe he’d get to fly today. If he flew with _the_ best pilot, no one would get to make fun of him when he went below again, because he’d been in the sky and kicked some Homunculi ass and could kick all of them, too.

His father leaned down and turned him about ninety degrees, then pointed. “There.”

“Where?” He searched the surface, which was basically all just blue-gray dust and rocks, with craters from fallen debris from the rubble belt. “I can’t see it.”

“That’s the point, Ed. We have to remain hidden.”

“But you fight, don’t you? Won’t they eventually learn where the fighters are coming from? Why don’t you move the base?”

A broad hand ruffled his hair, and he squeaked in indignance. “Good questions, Ed—but we have to keep it here, above Amestris. That’s the big cavern I showed you last week.”

Oh, right—their _last_ expedition, though it hadn’t been nearly as exciting as this. “The one with all the machines?”

He nodded. “Inside Amestris, we found manufactories; that’s what lets was us build starships. We have to live nearby to protect the machinery, but we fly missions anywhere the Homunculi come down, anywhere they decided to bomb.”

“You protect other clans?”

He chuckled. “To me, there is only _one_ clan that matters: humankind. Before we crashed here, we were all part of the same fleet—and someday, all the wandering clans will remember that. They will come when we call them. They’ll gather together, and we’ll form a city and build a civilization again.”

“Won’t the Homunculi bomb it?” he asked, but cut his father off before he could reply. “No. Not if we’re strong enough. Not if we stand and fight back.”

Father smiled, proud and bright.

“I’m going to have my own ship,” Ed said, tilting his head back to look up at the sky again. “I’m going to fly it just like you. And then nobody in the clan will be able to make fun of me, because I’ll be _stronger_ than they are.”

His father looked at him for a moment before he spoke. “Is _that_ why you want to be a pilot?”

“They can’t say you’re too small when you’re a pilot.” Ed blinked up at the glimmering grayness, the infinity before him. “Nobody will think I’m weird, and I won’t get in trouble for fighting because my _job_ will be _fighting_. They won’t call me names, and everyone will love me.

 _Like they love you,_ he thought.

That made his father hug him for some stupid reason, even though he’d just been telling the truth. But Ed hugged him back, because that was the kind of thing parents liked. Besides, it did feel good to have someone to hold. Maybe he shouldn’t have left Massacre behind.

Father breath caught, and for a terrifying moment Ed thought he might be crying, but it wasn’t that. “Fullmetal,” he whispered, pointing to the sky. “Ed. _Look.”_

Again, he was struck by the expanse of it all. _So BIG._

Father was pointing at something specific. Ed squinted, noting that a section of the gray-black sky was darker than the rest. A hole through the layer of debris?

In that moment, he looked out into infinity. He found himself trembling as if a billion meteors ad hit nearby. He could see space itself, with little pinpricks of white in it, different from the skylights. These _sparkled,_ and seemed so, so far away.

“What are those lights?” Ed whispered.

“Stars,” he said. “I fly up near the debris, but I’ve almost never seen through it. There are too many layers. I’ve always wondered if I could get out to the stars.”

There was _awe_ in his father’s voice, a tone he’d never heard from him before.

“Is that…is that why you fly?” he asked.

His father didn’t seem to care about the praise the other members of the clan gave him. Strangely, he seemed _embarrassed_ by it. Like he felt he didn’t deserve it or something equally ridiculous.

“We used to live out there, among the stars,” he breathed, gaze fixed on those pinpricks of light. “That’s where we belong, not in those caverns. The kids who make fun of you, they’re trapped on this rock. Their heads are heads of rock, their hearts set upon rock. Set _your_ sights on something higher. Something more grand.”

The debris shifted, and the hole slowly shrank until all Ed could see was a single star brighter than the others.

“Claim the stars, Edward,” Van Hohenheim said.

Ed _was_ going to be a pilot someday. He would fly up there and _fight._ He just hoped Father would leave some Homunculi for him.

He squinted as something flashed in the sky. A distant piece of debris, burning brightly as it entered the atmosphere. Then another fell, and another. Then dozens.

Father frowned and reached for his radio—a superadvanced piece of technology that was only ever given to pilots. He lifted the blocky device to his mouth. “This is Aurum,” he called. “I’m on the surface. I see a debris fall close to Xerxes.”

“We’ve spotted it already, Aurum,” a woman’s voice crackled in. Ed jumped at it, then leaned closer, excited. Was that a pilot on the other end, or just a command techie? Either way, it was _cool._ “Radar reports are coming in now, and… _scud._ We’ve got Homunculi.”

“What cavern are they headed for?” There was so little of his father in that voice, sharp and brisk and analyzing everything. It was the voice of callsign: Aurum, the most fearless pilot _ever._ Ed’s excitement only built at the sound of it.

“Their heading is…Aurum, they’re heading this way. They’re flying straight for Amestris. Stars help us; they’ve located the base!”

Father lowered his radio, Ed freezing as the color drained from his face. That look…meant fear, didn’t it? Or was it worry? Surely _Van “Aurum” Hohenheim_ couldn’t be scared of…of the Homunculi. He fought them every day. Maybe he was just worried. Ed _hoped_ it was just worry.

“Large Homunculi breach sighted,” the woman’s voice said through the radio. “Everyone, this is an emergency. _An extremely large group of Homunculi has breached the debris field._ All fighters report in. They’re coming for Xerxes!”

Father took his arm. “Let’s get you back.”

 _Wha—_ “They need you!” Ed tugged his arm out of his father’s grip as best he could, then settled for glaring up at him. “You’ve gotta go fight!”

“I have to get you to—”

“I can get back by myself. It was a straight trip through those tunnels.” _And my getting back won’t matter if they bomb Amestris and kill everyone, anyways._

Father glanced toward the debris again. “Aurum!” a new voice barked over the radio. “Aurum, you there?”

“Flame?” Father said, flipping a switch and raising his radio. “I’m up on the surface.”

“You need to talk some sense into Dust and Iron. They’re saying we need to flee.”

Father cursed under his breath, words Ed definitely was not supposed to know, before flipping another switch on the radio. A voice came through. “—aren’t ready for a head-on fight yet! We’ll be ruined.”

“No,” another woman snapped, this one with a voice like ice and steel. “We _have_ to stand and fight.”

A dozen voices started talking at once.

“North is right,” his father said into the line, and—remarkably—they all grew quiet. That was another strange, amazing thing about Ed’s father—when he spoke, people _listened,_ even when he was quiet. Ed could scream and scream and never be heard, but one word from Father and the world fell still.

Ed wanted to be like that someday.

“If we let them bomb Amestris, then we lose the apparatus,” his father said. “We lose the manufactories. We lose the Defiant Defense Force. We lose _everything._ If we ever want to have a civilization again, a _world_ again, we _have to stand here!”_

Ed waited, silent, holding his breath and praying he’d be too distracted to send him away. He trembled at the idea of a battle, but he still wanted to watch it.

“We fight,” the woman—North—said.

“We _fight,”_ said Flame. Ed knew him by name, though he hadn’t met him. He was his father’s wingmate. “Hot rocks, this is a good one. I’m going to beat you into the sky, Aurum! Just you watch how many I bring down!”

The man sounded eager, maybe a little too excited, to be heading into battle. Ed liked him immediately.

His father debated only a moment before pulling off his light-line bracelet and stuffing it into his hands. “Promise me you’ll go back straightaway.”

“I promise.”

“Don’t dally.”

“I won’t.”

He raised his radio. “Yeah, Flame, we’ll see about that. I’m running for Xerxes now. Aurum out.”

He dashed across the dusty ground in the direction he’d pointed earlier. He pulled off his pin and tossed it—like a glittering fragment of a star—to me before continuing his run toward the hidden base.

Ed, of course, immediately broke his promise. He climbed into the crack, but hid there, clutching Father’s pin, and watched until he saw the starfighters leave Xerxes and streak toward the sky. He squinted and picked out the dark Homunculi ships swarming down toward them.

He watched as destructor blasts fired, and he watched as ships and debris rained down, and he watched as a heap of slag plummeted toward him, unaware—until the debris crashed down from the force of the battle and swallowed him whole in dust and dirt and pain, pinning him between the surface and the caverns. His screams went unheard in the chaos of the battle, the emptiness of the surface, and he fell to the pain, the silence, his hero far away in the skies above.

When he woke, he was in a medical bay, wrapped in bandages and one leg lighter than he’d been this morning, his father’s pin and light-line somehow untouched by the crash of debris around him. Metal took the place of flesh, and cowardice the place of heroism—because while he’d been unconscious, clawing his way through pain, Van Hohenheim infamously broke ranks and fled from the enemy. His own flight shot him down in retribution. By the time he awoke, the battle had been won, his father gone.

And Edward Elric had been branded the son of a coward.

**Author's Note:**

> so what did you think? leave a comment or a kudos if you liked it!
> 
> oh, and guess who callsign: Flame and callsign: North are! Callsign: Dust and callsign: Iron are OCs there to sort of...fill slots, i guess, but we'll see more of Flame and North in Claim the Stars


End file.
